Out of the Ashes
by ceridwen-amyed
Summary: "You're so innocent, Harry," she said. "I need a tonic." A dark H/G, Hr/R vignette


**Disclaimer:** Characters and places belong to J K Rowling (4 months to go till OotP… :D ) 

_Out of the ash_

_I rise with my red hair _

_And I eat men like air._

~ **Lazarus**, Sylvia Plath

*

When he thinks about it now, Harry thinks that it did not start, as everyone suggested, on the last night at The Burrow, when he was sixteen. It started when he was twelve, poison running through his veins, in a dark chamber, two blotches of red filling his vision. Maybe even earlier than that; maybe it was something preordained by the stars.

"Look," said Ginny, gripping his arm, "It's Sirius!"

They were in the garden of her home with the rest of her family – his adopted family, really – watching stars, drinking hot cocoa. He glanced up, expecting to see a motorbike imprinted against the sky. There was nothing, only brilliant winking stars. Ginny smiled.

"There," she said, her hand squeezing his arm tighter. She pointed. "The Dog Star." She looked at him, and her teeth gleamed in the moonlight. "It must be nice," she continued her eyes on his face possessively, "To look up and see his star… It's like he's always there."

Harry was less surprised by the fact that she knew about Sirius than he was when she put her head on his shoulder. Her breath was warm against his shoulder, and Harry didn't think twice about putting an arm around her.

And so it started.

She slipped into his life as easily as Ron could slip in and out of the Hogwarts kitchen. She was there, her hands with her bitten nails entwined with his, her head on his shoulder, their footsteps in perfect precision with each other. Harry leaned towards her and kissed her cheek when they parted, but never on the lips. The other girls in his year tittered and thought how sweet he was, embarrassed to kiss in public. Hermione smiled and said that she hoped that they would be good to each other. Ron said that if Harry hurt Ginny, Ron would chuck him out of their dormitory window.

They all laughed, though Ron probably meant it, but something nagged at the back of Harry's mind. It was like a dream, a face that he had forgotten, that lurked behind his own. A vague feeling of disquiet conquered him.

It was Christmas, and he still hadn't kissed her on the lips. He couldn't justify it to himself, not really. Ginny was so strange now, not the little girl he'd once known. She smiled at him secretly, and they never spoke, not the same way Ron and Hermione chattered on and on to each other. They touched: shoulders brushing, hands curling into fists around each other. He buried his head into her hair and smelt violets on her breath. He felt drawn to her like a moth drawn to light, but it was her heat that trapped him. It seemed to roll off her in smoky waves, and now his bed felt cold.

The winter seemed to drag on and on. He sat in front of the fire, shivering under blankets.  Snow pounded against windows and swirled in through open doors and windows. Harry shouted at anyone who left a window open. He wore Weasley knitted jumpers and thick socks. Hermione put her hand on his forehead and said that he should go to Madame Pomfrey. He did, but there was nothing wrong with him that her medicines could heal.

It was the holidays, and the dormitories smelt like holly and spices, but they were nearly empty. One night, Harry and Hermione swapped rooms. Hermione crawled into Ron's bed and Harry crawled into Ginny's. He wore striped pyjamas and left his glasses on his bedside table. He found her bed and then her through touch. Arms slipped around each other and Harry rested his head against her chest. 

He felt warm, warm and strangely complete as Ginny ran her hands through his hair. She caught his chin in her fingertips and tilted his face up to hers. They kissed, hot searing, sweaty kisses that burnt Harry's lips and skin. It was a relief, after weeks of being cold, to suddenly be too hot, to kick the sheets off the bed and bask in her reflected heat.

But it wasn't what he wanted. Relieved shock rippled through him as he realised this, backing away from her. She backed away too, and they stared at each other. Harry reached out and wiped her mouth with his thumb. She let out a little moan and fell against him, across his lap.

It should feel erotic, to be alone with your girlfriend in her bedroom, but it didn't feel erotic. Harry didn't want passion; he wanted a soft touch of lips on his forehead before he went to sleep, a hushed voice singing to him and arms to rock him. He wanted another red-head, and he would never have her back because she was dead and gone.

Harry didn't know what Ginny wanted; perhaps a cold gaze to cool her fire. He could see her, smouldering against the dark, crumbling to a pile of ashes.

They should have righted each other, cooled and heated each other. But they didn't.

The next day, when Ron and Hermione were sweet and tender to one another, Harry and Ginny broke up. Rumours raced through the school like wildfire and Ron was angry with Harry for a week, until Ginny explained that it was a mutual agreement to split. Harry never even kissed me, she insisted, and Ron was puzzled.

He asked Harry what they had done when they had been together, and Harry shrugged. Hermione kicked Ron under the table for being insensitive; couldn't he see that Harry was upset?

Harry began to dream in glorious Technicolor red. He saw phoenixes jabbing at each other, blood coursing across their scarlet chests, girls walking on red hot coals, braiding him blankets from their own burgundy hair. He woke up, and his bed was still cold.

The rumours continued to fly. No one said them to Harry's face, but he read them in the boy's toilets before the House Elves had a chance to scrub away the graffiti. Ron told Harry that his reputation was at stake, and that something needed to be done. Hermione kicked Ron under the table again; Harry has nothing to prove, she hissed.

Ginny had already started dating again. She worked steadily through the male population of Hogwarts, never a slut, she was never like that. Harry thought that she was searching for something, trying to find something she'd lost long ago. Or maybe she was trying to forget. Whichever it was, Harry felt unaccountably hurt by it. The relationship was over, but it was unfinished.

Still the rumours persisted, flagged by the Slytherins. And so Harry took up a few offers that had been made, kissed them outside their classes, fucked them in their bedrooms. It never lasted. Nothing ever did. Not even rumours.

Late one night in April, Harry lay on a Gryffindor sofa, reading. He felt a sudden breath of warm air, even though the fire was out. Ginny sat at the end of the sofa, her knees primly together. Her hair was tied up by a ribbon that flickered in the dim light. She sighed.

"You're so innocent, Harry," she began. "You're incorruptible." Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. 

"What do you want, Gin?" asked Harry, dog-earing his page. "Why are you- What is it that you want?"

"I need a tonic," she said thoughtfully. "I've been looking for it, but you're the only one that's come close." She leaned across him, resting her hands on his chest and kissed him chastely on the lips. Harry dropped his book and brushed her cheek with one hand.

She buried herself in his shoulder. "I want to forget!" she cried. "Why can't I forget?"

Harry stroked her back. Sometimes, he thought, you need to forget. You need to accept second best. You can't have what you want, what you need and so you go for the nearest thing.

She kissed him again, hard. Soon he tasted blood on his tongue and thought that it was his.

"Can you make me forget, Harry?" she asked.

"I can try," he said, because forgetfulness seemed quite wonderful at that moment. He felt that he wanted to be consumed by her, be filled by her own nightmares, her own demons, rather than his own. He was tired of dreaming of red-haired mothers and bespectacled fathers who died for him. Tired of seeing haunted red eyes gazing at him, grey eyes that were shuttered from life, dead because of him.

He kissed her and felt liquid fire trail from her fingertips and mouth into him. For the first time in months he felt warmth gush through him, flooding him with dreams of dark chambers and whispered voices and pages and pages of blank paper, slowly dripping secrets onto the floor.

Now Harry dreams in shades of red and grey. Maybe he's dying, slowly crumbling into ash under her burning kisses. It wouldn't be a bad thing. He will be hurt, broken into grey dust, and out of the ashes he will rise again, glittering and sharp as a knife. She will heal him.

Or perhaps it's him that's healing her. Perhaps his phoenix dreams are just her dreams, and after she's consumed him, she will rise from his ashes, hair gleaming, sword in her right hand. Rubies to match her hair. Silver for his ashes.

Either way, one of them will live. And in a time of war and uncertainty that little piece of knowledge is what keeps Harry going. His security blanket at night is the thought that at least one of them will live.

In the gathering darkness he clings onto that thought, and falls into her kisses.


End file.
